Legion Lost (15 page)

After
a horrific hike through the frozen forest, I stand like a spare part as
Stirling and Apryl make mincemeat of putting up our sleeping quarters for the
night. Despite the obvious strain on Stirling’s bruised face, he says it’s
better if those who’ve been properly trained set the tents up. At these words,
Goddie gives him a bitter look, then whispers to me: “One time, Raja. One time
de tent fell in on our heads, and now he won’t let me near dem.”

The
atmosphere within our little black tent is a strange cross between the Arctic
and a rainforest. Every surface is icy to the touch, but my skin is coated in a
horrible, clammy sweat from all the walking we’ve done. I wriggle around in my
sleeping bag until I can get out of the top layer of my fatigues. I’m grateful
to be free of the sticky garments, but suddenly cold again from the chill of
early spring.

I
have to change awkwardly inside the sleeping bag, because Stirling is only
inches away from me in the cramped, two-man space. He has stripped down to his
vest and shorts in silence, and he now lies on top of his sleeping bag, eyes
closed and hands gathered over his stomach. In the semidarkness of the tent,
I’m sure I can see yet more bruises making tidemarks and vile patterns on his
arms. I’m trying not to let my eyes wander any further down his long-limbed
form than that.

His
face is peaceful in the darkness. It’s now that I notice how high and sharp his
cheekbones are, curving down toward a nose that would really look too long on
anyone else. There are a lot of things about Stirling that are out of place,
like his small, childlike ears and the fact that his copper eyebrows are set
just a little too low over his eyes. Somehow, though, all of his features fit,
and I wouldn’t want to imagine him looking any other way than he does right
now: peaceful in his slumber.

“Go
to sleep, Raja,” he says in the darkness.

Okay,
so not quite in his slumber yet, then. I turn away to hide the blush in my
cheeks, even though logic tells me it’s far too dark for him to see it.
Stirling makes a little noise, and I don’t know whether it’s a sigh or a laugh.
Whatever it is, it makes me bristle, and I wonder how I’m ever going to get to
sleep with these awkward, embarrassing feelings wriggling in my gut.

Soon,
though, the full effect of the day’s hike is upon me, and I feel myself
drifting into dreams as Stirling breathes gently by my side.

*

In
the morning, he is gone. Outside, I can hear the raised voices of my
companions, and I quickly scramble into my clothes to step out into the
sunlight. It’s getting warmer at sunrise, as though winter has finally lost its
grip on us, and Goddie and Stirling are at the river bank, half-dressed but
fully into an argument. Apryl stands between them, one wide hand facing each
boy, like a patient mother trying to settle her children’s squabble.

“I
did not lose it!” Goddie insists.

“Then
explain to me where the damn thing is!” Stirling demands.

“Hold
up,” Apryl says firmly. “Goddie, are you sure you checked all your gear this morning?”

“You
think I’m blind now, is dat it?” he challenges.

“Well,
you
did
lose the map tablet yesterday too,” Stirling adds with a sting.

Goddie’s
muscular top half is glistening with river water as he storms back to his
little tent. He passes me just as Apryl turns to call after him.

“Maybe
you’re just having a bad mission! Y’all know we have them sometimes!”

Her
sympathy falls on deaf ears as Goddie vanishes into his tent. I catch Apryl’s
eye for a moment, but my gaze is suddenly drawn to Stirling as he peels off his
vest. Dropping to his knees, he cranes his lanky form over the river and
splashes some water up onto his pale skin. I was right about his bruises
extending farther than his face. He even has what looks like a boot print
embossed on his back. Apryl laughs, and at first I think she’s caught me
looking at Stirling, but her eyes are fixed on the tree line overhead.

“So
Raja, you’re not doing the sexy, he-man, washing in the river thing?” she asks
dryly.

“Oh,
um . . . ” I stammer, fumbling for an excuse. “Well . . . I
don’t see the point, really. We’re only going to get filthy again climbing down
into the Underground, right?”

“My
feelings exactly,” Apryl says.

I
breathe a deep of sigh of relief when she’s not looking.

“Savages,”
Stirling quips from the bank, but I’m determined not to gawk at him again
whilst he’s half-naked.

“What’s
up with Goddie?” I ask.

“You
ain’t gonna believe it,” Apryl says, her bright eyes widening. “He’s only gone
and lost the mine-sweeper. Sheila’s gonna kill us for this one.”

“Don’t
worry about it,” Stirling tells her. “He probably left it on the hovercraft
with the map tablet.”

“No,”
I say immediately, my memory surging with visions of yesterday. “I saw him with
it at the forest’s edge. We’ve definitely lost it en route.”

Apryl
is still admiring the wilderness, but I don’t miss the way Stirling’s shoulders
jar at my words. He stretches back into his vest as he stands up, facing me
with that suspicious glare that I wish I wasn’t getting used to.

“That’s
mighty observant of you,” he remarks.

I
give him a shrug.

“It’s
a big piece of kit, and hard to miss. I’m surprised you didn’t notice it too.”

It
genuinely does surprise me that Stirling is being so casual about losing such
an important item. I suppose it could be the simple fact that he’ll be out of
here before the end of March that’s spurring his attitude. The rejects won’t be
his problem for very much longer. He walks away without answering my comment,
and I guess that’s our cue to start packing up for the rest of the hike. I
don’t know how far the river carried me that first night that I escaped, but I
reason that we’ll probably find the Underground quite early this morning. I
almost leave to get my stuff ready, but a sudden realisation makes me pause
beside Apryl.

“Hey,
where’s Lucrece?” I ask.

“Where
d’you think?” Apryl replies.

She
hitches her thumb in a downstream direction, and a moment later Lucrece appears
from within the brush. It’s easy to tell from her strained face and dry,
cracked lips that she’s been vomiting yet again. She looks weaker than ever as
she stumbles forward, and I rush to give her my shoulder to lean on.

“You’re
still sick?” I ask. “Why didn’t Sheila give you something to stop it?”

Lucrece
gives me a sad smile, looking at me from under her long, dark lashes.

“Sheila
says there’s only one cure for what I’ve got,” Lucrece explains.

“Well,
that’s good isn’t it?” I reply. “When will you get the cure?”

“They
already gave me it,” the frail girl answers, “but it takes a while to work.”

She
squeezes my hand hard as I walk her back to the tents, and the strange,
desperate quality to her words makes me shiver with every step.

*

Goddie
grumps forward at the head of the pack as we press on through the west woods.
Since the accusation of his clumsiness, I’ve seen a new side to the usually
cheerful soldier. He is bitter and subdued, stomping like an infant through the
foliage, which is becoming less dense by the moment. The forest is fading and
receding all around us, and soon I spy a glimmer of barbed wire glinting out of
the dirt ahead. A familiar scene is coming into view, though I remember it only
in shadow.

“We’re
here,” I exclaim proudly. “Look, there’s a way in through that fence over
there.”

The
jagged hole that I cut to make my escape has not been repaired. Once we’re
inside the fence’s perimeter, I find that the ground has been totally cleared.
There are outlines and ash pits, remnants of those who were settled here
recently, and strips of corrugated metal lie discarded in a heap. Goddie gives
one of the sheets a puerile kick, and the clang echoes across the empty earth.

“Looks
like a temporary camp,” Stirling states. “The military must have moved in
overhead before the raid. I’ll bet that’s what Briggs has got the Legion doing
right now at the next target.”

Flashes
of the chaos and carnage of the raid fly past my mind, and I can’t bear to
think that another peaceful set of Underground dwellers are about to be ripped
out of their quiet lives. I feel like I should be there, trying to help them
flee. Instead, I’m looking at the ruins of my own existence, and knowing, with
a sickening certainty, that my old home and my old life have been well and
truly destroyed.

The
chasm that was once the Atrium’s roof opens before me like the pit of hell. For
one morbid moment, leaping into its black abyss seems like a reasonable
solution to the life I’m now trapped in. But no, I push that thought away. I am
stronger than that. I will not let the System tempt me into giving up, not when
it’s made the path ahead a little easier. The soldiers who destroyed my home
have left strong steel clips in the ground above the chasm, and Goddie and
Apryl attach ropes to them so that we can climb down into the shadowy wreckage.

The
pair of them are looking into the deep pit as though something dangerous might
be lurking within it.

“So,
who’s first den?” Goddie asks.

“I
am.”

“Me.”

Stirling
and I speak at the same moment, looking to each other with mutual
determination. The lanky soldier nods his head.

“Together
then,” he concedes.

It’s
my home, but not my home. A strange familiarity overcomes me once I’m standing
at the base of the Atrium. I remember its dark, curved walls and the numerous
ladders that lead to the different sections of my former world. But now,
without the busy hum of hundreds of people going about their lives, the vast,
empty space makes me feel as though I’ve stepped into a horrible dream. It’s
hard to accept that this is the place I lived and thrived in just over a week
ago. If the Atrium could see me, would it find me just as hard to recognise
too?

“Wow,”
Stirling remarks, walking to a switch that still operates the sub-level lights.
“This is pretty well organised.”

“What
did you expect?” Goddie retorts. “The Underground are survivalists, not
animals.”

I
feel a surge of pride at Goddie’s defensiveness, but it is short-lived. We are
interrupted by a sudden sound, and I’m ashamed of how quickly and instinctively
I reach for my gun. This place was my home not long ago—there should be nothing
for me to fear within it. Yet that noise prickles the short hairs at the nape
of my neck. It is a strange, uneven scuffling, like that of a large creature.

“Hello?
Is . . . Is there somebody out there?”

Either
the world has sped up around me, or I’ve been frozen to the spot. I recognise
the weak, broken voice that is calling from the shadows, and it echoes through
every corner of my mind as I stand stock-still with fright. Everyone seems to
pause with me, until the voice calls out again.

“Hello?
Are you there? Please I . . . I need help.”

And
then we’re moving. Stirling is leading the pack with his gun raised high, and I
struggle to keep up as my mind attempts to process the voice in some semblance
of logic. How can he be here? How is it that Briggs and his men didn’t capture
him with the others? The path of his familiar voice is leading us towards the
corridor where I used to live, but it still seems impossible that I’m about to
look into his face. A face that part of me thought I would never see again.

It’s
Vinesh.

But
it’s also not Vinesh, not in the way my lonely mind had memorised him. He is on
the floor in the room where we used to gather for our meals, pushing forward on
his wide arms to drag a lame leg behind him. His cocoa-coloured skin is paler
now, and caked in dirt and dried blood. All of this would be bad enough, if not
for the damage that’s been done to his face. I can barely see him for the tears
of shock that well in my eyes. On the left side of his head, his ear has all
but burned away, leaving a raw, encrusted mess all over his head and neck.
Worst of all, when he looks up at the sound of our arrival, his dark brown eyes
are now obscured by a horrific, cloudy whiteness.

“You’re
blind,” I say aloud, my voice shaking with the shock of it all.

“What’s
that?” Vinesh asks. “You have to speak on the right side of me. My hearing’s
not so good.”

He
turns his good ear to all of us, and I realise with a sad, guilty sensation
that I cannot speak again. Vinesh might know my voice, just as I knew his, and
any chance I have of keeping my cover will be lost if he recognises me. Apryl
is the nearest to where Vinesh lies, and though he cannot see her, he scrambles
forward and reaches aimlessly for her boot. Apryl crouches down slowly, letting
her hand find his on the ground.

“Please,”
Vinesh begs, his voice cracking. “I’ve been here for days. My leg is broken.
Please, say you can help me.”

Stirling
is the next to approach him.